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This is completely off topic, but whenever we get a newcomer I'm always intrigued, since we don't advertise too much (at all). How did you end up finding us?
We should ask the pseudo-communist. He was genuine. How did you find us, @MillardJMelnyk?
I‘ll also note that the harsh moderation pushed him away (He‘s also obviously been downvoted for disagreement, but I‘m just wasting my time complaining about this, and it‘s not the main factor).
The Motte is a debate site and he wasn’t remotely interested in debate. At best, he was interested in, “accept all of my assertions and let’s discuss the implications” but prefaced that with insults and demands. He was quite clear in his last message that he regards talking to 99% of people as a waste of time and his usual MO was to turn up, start an argument, and listen for anything interesting in the shouting.
Oddly, the poster he reminds me most of is Hlynka. Hlynka employed the same refrain of ‘oh, I can’t tell you, you can only choose to see it for yourselves’ and by his own admission thought of himself as a shepherd nobly taking it upon themselves to lead us poor lost sheep to the true way.
Well, if he‘s really not interested in debate, let him leave, don‘t ban him(or threaten to ban him). Call it keeping the moral high ground. I don‘t see anything wrong with ‚starting an argument‘.
But bottom line, I think millard or hlynka are reasonable people, who should not be banned for their overconfident tone.
I don't see how not enforcing against blatant rule violations is keeping the moral high ground. The rules are right there on the right sidebar, and he refused to follow the ones around things like speaking clearly or being no more obnoxious than necessary or proactively providing evidence, despite being given ample opportunity to do so. Letting the forum be polluted with the type of content that the forum was specifically set up to prevent seems to be immoral, if anything, in making the forum worse for the rest of the users who use this forum because of the types of discussion that is fostered by those rules being enforced (though I'd argue that there's no real moral dimension to it regardless). I don't know if Millard is a reasonable person, but he certainly did not post reasonable comments and, more importantly, posted comments that broke the forum's rules in a pretty central way.
Those rules are so vague they can apply to anyone. And when you‘re facing a hostile community, they apply to you.
The ‚they‘re obviously not interested in debate‘ talking point is an absurd, but very common justification for censoriousness. Just dumping the responsibility for one‘s negatively- coded actions onto the victim. Here or on reddit, you hear that every time an OP doesn‘t cave immediately to the social consensus. To the stake with OP! He „has been given ample opportunity“ [to repent].
I don't think those rules are that vague, except by stretching what "vague" means to such an extent that all rules everywhere can be declared "so vague they can apply to anyone." If you don't think that his comments were pretty obviously unkind and failing to make reasonably clear and plain points, on top of making extreme claims without proactively providing evidence, then I don't take your judgment seriously.
I don't care if he was or wasn't interested in debate. What matters is that he was posting text that wasn't conducive to, and actually quite deleterious to, debate.
Right, I disagree that "his comments were pretty obviously unkind and failing to make reasonably clear and plain points, on top of making extreme claims without proactively providing evidence" and 'deleterious to debate'. So at least take out the 'obviously's and 'blatant's.
Else I'd have to report an "attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity." (illustrating the point about the rules applying to whoever we choose).
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